When I started (very) occasionally blogging again I didn't mean for my blog to become a review series for new Apple products, but the HomePod is out, and I've been using it for the last few days. There have been a plethora of reviews over the past week, and I was struck more than I've been ordinarily by how misaligned they were with my own expectations for what reviews should be doing.

Most all of them boil down to three points:

The sound is extraordinary for such a small (yet heavy) speaker

Siri isn't as good an A.I. as Alexa or Google Assistant (Cortana is dead)

Siri doesn't support Spotify

Most of the reviews I've read correctly cover the first point, but over index quite a bit on the later two points and often don't even begin to get into the details beyond the sound quality, which seperate this product from its closest comparisons.

Sound

A.I.

Artificial intelligence, much raved about, is still pretty tame and in my relatively uninformed estimation it will remain so for quite some time. The intelligence with which they parse queries isn't really that different from what we've seen for decades; they're just better integrated with APIs and structured data, and with a better designed (but not particularly smarter) interaction layer run front of it and most importantly, you interact with your voice, as opposed to through text, which makes a huge difference in how they're perceived.

In short, they don't understand people, but are very knowledgable and will likely remain like this for years to come. Calling this 'A.I.' is really stretching the term beyond the breaking point.

And that's why the reviews comparing other speakers's abilities to answer trivia questions and use 'skills' confuses me. They're all equally bad at understanding queries and conversations, and most studies of this space find that everyone uses their Echos and G Speakers for the same set of tasks: Music, timers/reminders/alarms, weather, news, home automation and then a long tail of other stuff, including things like trivia and jokes.

Yet reviews cite these studies, list out those core tasks and then spend the rest of the time complaining about how Siri can't tell them who the chief architect of the Hoover Dam is or It boggles the mind. Presumably they believe, and maybe rightly so, that their readers care about these features (Well I'm a reader, and I couldn't care less). We have no less than four Echos (and a fifth Dot not in use) throughout our apartment, and I don't need any hands to count the number of times we've used any of them to answer trivia questions, because the answer is none.

It's fair to remark that Siri, Alexa and (so help me) Google Assistant all occupy the same general space, but these comparisons smell like the same checklist comparisons that get pulled out for every new iPhone review. I'm not dismissive of the fact that there is some overlap, but I also intuit that for most people this doesn't really matter.

And what about skills/expandability? For our Echos we have two: Hue and iRobot. Siri doesn't need Hue., which is supported by HomeKit. I don't know if iRobot could build HomeKit support, but it would be neat if they could, but if I need to use the app or even go so far as to bend down to start the Deep Thought (our vacuum robot), so be it.

That's not to say that I'm a hard no on expandability, or that Siri would be worse off if it could answer trivia questions, but without any hard data to back it up, I nevertheless think that reviewers vastly over index on these features, whereas most people will see "Great speaker, has Siri" and be fine with it. Amazon says users use one skill on average, but if that clusters around HomeKit functionality for instance, Siri's got it covered.

Now call me a zealot, but I also think the narrative around Siri being less than Alexa and Google Assistant (put your company name in everything, why don't you) doesn't actually reflect reality. They're all equally alright, with lots of issues. If Apple is to be faulted for anything, it should be that their language interpreter isn't further along than everyone else at this point given their head start.

Spotify

I don't mean to slag off Spotify, they're obviously loved by many, but I'm 20 years deep in iTunes/Apple Music, and whenever I try Spotify I find the experience so-so at best in large part due to the dark, uninviting interface and in part thanks to the fact that... well I'm 20 years into iTunes. And for all of iTunes's foibles, and the rocky road it has been to use iTunes Match, I nevertheless continue to have the same library as I've had since I got my first MP3 back in 1997 (at The Party in Års for what that's worth).

That's just me and my personal preferences, it obviously works great for many, but given that Apple Music has built up 36 million users in two years versus Spotify's 70 million in ten years, I think it's a good bet that Apple doesn't feel like they need to put too much effort into supporting Spotify to make this product a success. Moreover it's arguable that the HomePod is a supplement to Apple Music, more than it is a generalized speaker.

And sure, it's appropriate for reviews to explain that the HomePod doesn't hook into Spotify, but the way in which it seems to be such a sticking point for many says more about their allegiance to Spotify than I think it does about Apple's approach with the HomePod's allegiance to Apple's own ecosystem. Our Echos are in our home in spite of their lack of Apple Music support. When it comes to it, the HomePod is the only real choice for us, due to just that.

The Interface

Something that wasn't covered in the reviews I've read is how the HomePod is to interact with. Too much time spent on what isn't there, and not enough on what is. I will compare with Echo where appropriate; I haven't use the G Speaker.

When Echo detects 'Alexa' it halts or lowers audio, plays a note and lights up a blue ring, stronger in the direction of the voice. This is useful as it is very clear whether or not the Echo is listening. Being able to see it around corners or out of the corner of an eye in a darkened room can also be quite handy.

When HomePod detects 'Hey, Siri' it keeps playing the music until after the query (and then subdues it as if you're standing outside a music venue while it replies), which is a little disconcerting, although nice when you're just changing volume (Alexa has to interrupt with an 'okay'). But since it keeps playing, doesn't play a note and you can't actually see the Siri motion graphic from anywhere but fairly close to and above the HomePod, you just have to assume that Siri is listening... Which sometimes isn't the case, especially when there are five people in the same room, with a bunch of crosstalk etc. It would be nice to be able to feel a little more confident in whether or not I'm being made to look like a fool.

The top is a touch screen, and it's beautifully minimalistic. But the + and - buttons only appear when it's playing music, so you can't change it before starting the music, and there is no indication of how loud the volume is set. Echo on the other hand lights up the ring to show you when you change it. When Siri is talking, the volume controls disappear, so you can't change the volume while she's talking. This morning when I came into the kitchen, I didn't know what volume the HomePod was at from last night, so to not wake my family I would have to first tell Siri to set the volume, and then ask her to play something, instead of being able to see what the volume was and set it using the touch interface. As it happened I just asked Siri to play the news, and she then started yammering fairly loudly (and she's consistently too loud), and because the volume controls don't show up while Siri's talking... You see the problem.

It's beautifully minimalistic, but not particularly practical.

The whole surface also responds to taps to play, pause etc. which is nice, but I've triggered it by accident no less than three times in the three days I've had it... This might be a case where adding some signifiers to the affordances would be helpful, even if it clashes with the strict minimalism of the GUI.

It truly pains me to say this, but while none of these things are fatal flaws, the Amazon Echo is point for point better at telling the user what's happening and how to use it. Of course, I've never been able to figure out what the button with the dot on the Echo does, so don't throw a party just yet, Amazon.

Using the phone's controls for the HomePod works well, except the volume control has to cover so much territory that even a small nudge can mean a big difference.

Privacy

It's frightening how American corporations at large, supported by the government here, are free to completely and utterly disregard the individual's right to privacy. Apple has rightfully wielded their ability to care about their customers's privacy as a weapon against their competitors as well as the US government (to some extent), and I'm personally a high proponent of their stance on this.

Putting an always-on microphone in your house was scary when Microsoft did it with the Kinect, it was even scarier when Amazon did it with the Echo and it was downright terrifying when Google did it with whatever their doodad is called.

Now I kinda, sorta trust Amazon enough that I'm willing to allow Echos into our house. I don't think that they would use it to listen for ways to sell more products, but on the other hand I wouldn't be flabbergasted if it turns out they did; they fight for fantastic customer experience, not for the customer. Also, that drop-in feature? Gives me the creeps, and I often check the (horrible) app to make sure our Echos aren't set up to enable it.

I don't trust Google. I remember when I found that the Google app had been recording my every move without asking me. That same day I switched away from Gmail and never looked back.

But I trust Apple. They've lead the way on both security and privacy, and continue to have nothing to gain by surreptitiously profiling me (hi, Facebook). Whatever costs that has in the way of improved 'machine learning' and other fancy new technologies, that is a cost I'll happily pay.

Other Details

Siri's voice is too loud in the mix. I understand that different albums are mixed at different levels, but Siri is consistently too loud, to the point where I sometimes want to flinch. This is especially frustrating when I've specifically set HomePod to a relatively low setting, playing quiet music, only for her to speak loudly and confidently into the room as if there wasn't a wife and child sleeping in the room next to me.

Conclusion

You want a best in class speaker, you subscribe to Apple Music, you're okay that it doesn't replace your TV setup, and it's in your price range?

Let's be honest, there are no other real options. Sonos perhaps? But if HomePod is in your price range, doesn't Sonos feel like settling?

There you have it, congratulations on your new speaker.

]]>HomePod, Sweet HomePodMassimo VignelliMichael HeilemannTue, 14 Mar 2017 18:38:30 +0000http://binarybonsai.com/blog/vignelli4ea1fd23d09a45b49cc70202:55a1212ae4b0417147b65e19:58c837732e69cf242211c694Sage words on consistency, refinement, novelty, and cultures from a master
of design.I've been making my way through the phenomenal Helvetica / Objectified / Urbanized: The Complete Interviews; a treasure trove of design insight. I bought the iBooks version, and have been highlighting it like a crazy person.

Here are a few snippets from Gary Hustwit’s interview with Massimo Vignelli, originally done for the Helvetica documentary on March 29, 2006 in New York.

—

MV — We always had the tendency to use very few typefaces. It’s not that we don't believe in type; we believe that there are not that many good typefaces, you know. If I want to be really generous, there’s a dozen. Basically, I use no more than three, I guess. Yeah, in my life, most of the time, I’m very happy with Helvetica and Garamond and Bodoni, basically. Then, of course, I use Century Expanded, and I can use Univers; I can use Futura, Gill—it depends on the job.

—

GH — I know you've done hundreds, or thousands, of different commissions. Was there ever a time where you proposed Helvetica to a client and they didn't want it—they had a negative reaction to it?

MV — No, because we cook it very well! If you know how to cook, you can eat eggs for life, so to speak, or chicken for life, or pasta for life. It’s like pasta. You can cook spaghetti so many different ways, you can hardly ever be tired of it. And the same is true of Helvetica. It’s spaghetti. It’s the slow food of typography.

—

MV — The approach was consistent throughout, because consistency is extremely important in design. This is forgotten most of the time by people designing books, magazines, signs, packaging, whatever it is. The least number of typefaces you use, the better, and the least number of font sizes is even better. It all stems, naturally from that good Swiss approach. The Swiss, maybe because they make watches, they are so precise. It’s interesting that all these theories were developed there, but they’re really universal; they have nothing to do with a specific country. It just has a lot to do with logic, and, of course, logic is not something that is really a currency over here in the USA. It is a different kind of culture, a different kind of sensitivity. This is the country for emotions, it’s the country for novelty, the country for being different. It’s not the country for consistency, logic, and that systematic approach.

—

MV — There were people who said you cannot read sans serif, you can only read it if it has the serifs, the feet. And there were people like the modernists saying, “It's not true. You can read modern typefaces. They're easier on the eye, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” And this went on for many, many years. I mean, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, they were still fighting about these things. I remember when I was still fighting about these things.

—

MV — Most people think they have to design a new typeface. It's not new typefaces we need—actually we don't need them at all; we have plenty. But what we need, still, is refinement of some of the good ones and then to develop them into a family.

—

Here's the portion included in the original documentary.

]]>Massimo VignelliSurface StudioMichael HeilemannMon, 31 Oct 2016 14:54:36 +0000http://binarybonsai.com/blog/innovation-and-execution4ea1fd23d09a45b49cc70202:55a1212ae4b0417147b65e19:58175875725e25ba0633a342Novelty often wins the news cycle regardless of execution, but does that
make for great product?

I went to both the Apple and Microsoft stores on Fifth Avenue earlier today to get a better sense of the two companies' clashing approaches to integrating multi-touch further into the world of desktop computing.

Apple has the new MacBook Pros on display, although unfortunately behind glass. From a short distance the Touch Bar looks great, with a beautiful mat finish and immediately begs the question of whether Apple will attempt to bring in-direct interactions to iOS in some form.

But the Surface Studio is of course, at a glance, the scene stealer in this battle. And indeed, the screen is amazing up close. Unfortunately the peripherals feel like a strange counterpunch: cheap and unimpressive. If the thought crossed your mind they would compare them to similar Apple products, allow me to dispel the notion.

Furthermore, input is laggy, at times comically so even.

It's hard to imagine that Apple would ever ship something like that.

Here's another example; as I scroll the dial, pay attention to the lag here. It's really quite bad.

It's a hard to see, but the zoom is jaggy and kind of crappy. I can't say for sure whether that's Microsoft's fault as such, but they did put the software on this computer for customers to play with.

And the build quality of the dial is perhaps the most disappointing thing. It doesn't live up to the promise if a high-end volume jog at all. It has lots of give (and doesn't stick as well to the screen as you'd hope either), and doesn't seem to give any kind of tactile feedback.

I initially thought the lag was so bad in the browser that I was surprised that it was shipping; someone told me it might be due to scroll interpolation. That may be, but if that kind of thing had happened at Apple, that scroll interpolation would be taken care of forthwith.

I know this all sounds quite harsh, but these peripherals feel like toys, not high-end, professional tools. And that's a real shame, because having used the Apple Pencil with the 12.9" iPad Pro my standards for similar peripherals have been raised far beyond what's on display here.

But that screen though. It's huge, and gorgeous. It makes the 27" iMac 5K—a computer I love dearly—feel antiquated.

Alas, all of this has to live with Windows, and it is really bad at coping with what it's been made responsible for. It simply wasn't built for these use cases, nor were the programs, and all in all it comes together as a real mess. Where iOS may at times feel confined, at least it's very consistent and easy to use. Windows just feels hurried and thoughtless; as if it needed another year of hard choices in the studio.

As an example, when using Illustrator, the obvious thought is to lay down the Surface Studio, but the software was never meant to be used in that position and so it fights your usage instincts every step of the way. This is as opposed to an iPad, which was meant to be used exactly that way (and fights you going to other way), even if it has no Illustrator.

The juxtaposition between these two different approaches to adding new methods of input to traditional desktop computers is a striking one.

I can pretty much guarantee—in fact Jony Ive has said as much—that Apple has had a prototype of a Mac that would have looked similar to the Surface Studio, yet they decided not to turn it into a product because they knew they wouldn't be able to deliver the level of experience they aim for.

Microsoft on the other hand... Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. And I admittedly love that Microsoft has made the Surface Studio. It's a very interesting computer on a whole number of levels.

Yet that first-use experience is really quite terrible. And while a few of the issues might either be chalked up to bad product samples in the store, or similar minor issues which will be ironed out over a year or two, it's hard to see all of the rough edges, especially around Windows itself, getting sanded down enough for this to be a true love affair.

Yet if I were a Windows user, the Surface Studio would be my next computer regardless, so...

This post originally consisted of a series of tweets I had made after a visit to the Microsoft and Apple stores upon the releases of the Surface Studio and MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. I later started purging my older tweets on an on-going basis, and the content here was lost. This is a recreation.

]]>Surface StudioInevitable DesignMichael HeilemannMon, 07 Mar 2016 14:12:59 +0000http://binarybonsai.com/blog/inevitable4ea1fd23d09a45b49cc70202:55a1212ae4b0417147b65e19:56dd8adf07eaa05aaac0da30On the deplorable state of bed design and the role of materials in
designing the inevitable.

Our bed, although regrettably not our bedroom

During the summer of 2015 my wife and I slept on a mattress on the floor for three or four months. The veneer on our IKEA monstrosity had begun to chip and warp, so one day I ordered a Casper mattress and threw everything else out the moment it arrived.

Harkening back to the William Morris quote about only bringing into your home that which you know to be useful and feel to be beautiful, it's truly surprising just how hard it is to find those two properties in one piece of furniture. Most furniture is at best ‘variant on a theme’, at worst insensitive and utterly compromised.

It took hundreds of bed frames to find a simple, elegant walnut frame well above our price level. After a couple of months of indecision on the floor it became clear that there was in reality no choice at all and we bought our new bed, The queen-sized American Modern bed from Design Within Reach*.

And it's amazing. No more than a sturdy wooden plate, beveled inwards ops the lower side to create the illusion of being thinner, with six brass-capped legs (two along the center, out of sight).

In the foot-end a ledge runs the breadth of the frame holding the mattress in place. The mattress otherwise simply lays on the frame making access effortless, and at the head-end three curved pieces of metal hold in-place a simple round-edged headboard, tilted slightly backwards.

It's clear just from looking at the frame itself that the materials are great, but it's the design itself that is the price; what Jony Ive might call “inevitable”. It would later turn out to be a 60 year old design by George Nelson, which I was gleefully unaware of at the time.

But having spent time perusing bed frames, I couldn't help but wonder—since beds have always been around—why are the vast majority so utterly ‘evitable’?

Perhaps because the inevitable design requires great materials. Not simply because it makes the bed look better, but because the materials dictate what's possible.

Great materials, with the strength to pull together this design, are expensive, therefore most designs are instead forced to construct their way towards the strength needed to support the human body, which causes the inevitable to be obscured by assemblage, insipid wide-edged sides and a morass of compromises.

There's a parable about software design in there somewhere, but this isn't a parable thinkpiece, so leave it alone.

* The American Modern line of bedroom furniture disappeared a few months after we had bought our bed, and in its place DWR trumpeted the arrival of the Nelson Thin Edge collection. Very similar furniture, with an even higher price tag. The American Modern line might have been an attempt a new version of the Thin Edge collection? It's strange either way as it seems like Herman Miller, which owns Design Within Reach, also holds the right to the Nelson collections, so why the intermediary step? Moreover, the American Modern line was slightly different, and is no longer available.

]]>Inevitable DesigniPad ProMichael HeilemannWed, 20 Jan 2016 22:40:50 +0000http://binarybonsai.com/blog/life-with-ipad-pro4ea1fd23d09a45b49cc70202:55a1212ae4b0417147b65e19:569ea5d0fd5d08bad0fa7243Having had some time to mull over the large iPad Pro, it's time to opine at
length.So now that I've spent a little while with the iPad Pro, what's it like? Firstly, you certainly won't be holding it in one hand; at best you'll be cradling it like a small child.

Secondly, yes it still engenders a healthy mixture of “can I see it with my fingers”-fascination and “how do you like it”-skepticism when out and about. My stock response of “the pencil's great, and it does some things very well, but it'll take a few years before it's ready for prime time” sweeps over the finer details.

No more.

Pencil

As previously noted, the Pencil remains an unmitigated success. While it's handy for a quick-charge, it still looks silly when charging in the iPad's lightning port, but beyond that it's the best new thing Apple has done in years. Thanks to it, I spend by far most of my time on the iPad Pro in FiftyThree's Paper, sketching UI wireframes for future Squarespace projects. But more than that, I want to go back again and again, it feels that great.

Unfortunately the Pencil (or simply ‘Pencil’ if you want to do like Tim Cook, which I don't) is also at the center of one of the more annoying things about the iPad Pro, namely transporting it. It's a big boy, and while not particularly more or less unwieldy than a laptop (less without the Smart Keyboard, more with as it ‘scoots around’ a bit), there is just no good place to put the Pencil. That the Smart Keyboard or the Cover don't have a little elastic pouch for stowing it is mind boggling.

When you want to just use the iPad Pro itself, all naked-like, you have to stash the peripherals somewhere, and unless you're well organized, the Pencil is likely to go and get itself lost. If not that, at the very least it's just kind of floating around the apartment or office searching for a more permanent home. It's uncivilized, is what it is.

This also means that when I ferry the iPad Pro around the office, to meetings and my team's tables, I have to either hold the Pencil in my hand with the iPad Pro (as I navigate doors and stairs), or deposit it in my pocket. Luckily I have relatively deep pockets, but some day I'll sit down and regret that I didn't check the Pencil's position in the pocket first, potentially regretting not having had children earlier to boot.

The Pencil finds its way to the bottom of whatever bag you're likely to put it into, which makes fishing it out a frustrating little affair in itself.

A thousand cuts and everything.

Awkwardness

Another point of some awkwardness is setting up the whole affair once you get to the next meeting. But let's back up for a minute.

The Smart Keyboard remains largely good for typing. The arrow keys aren't great (compressing the up and down arrow keys into the space of a single normal-sized key is the worst new thing Apple has introduced in years, by the way), sometimes I feel like it isn't picking up my Command + TABs and I continue to accidentally hit the Language key because my brain often wants to delete the character on the right hand side of the caret. On a MacBook this requires the Fn key, which lives where the Language key lives on the Smart Keyboard, and Delete.

That of course switches me to either an emoji keyboard or to Danish (or English if I was on Danish, which I never am). It works much like the Language/Globe key on the software keyboard, in that pressing it repeatedly sends it on a slightly unpredictable course through the available keyboard layouts. Without descending into too much detail, it can be maddening to suddenly be interrupted because you accidentally hit it and now the output from your English-language hardware keyboard is being corrected with a Danish dictionary.

There also seems to be a tendency for it to sometimes get caught in the wrong language, and since as opposed to the software keyboard, there is no clear indicator which keyboard layout you're using, it's doubly confusing. Sometimes I have to disconnect and reconnect the Smart Keyboard to literally snap some sense into it.

On the whole the keyboard connection seems a bit buggy. As I'm typing this for instance, the language key doesn't actually work at all, while everything else seems to work perfectly (I updated to iOS 9.3 beta 1 yesterday, from iOS 9.2 non-beta, so that might be why, who can tell?).

I see the usage for the language key on a hardware keyboard, although I would love the ability to disable it for good. It can be helpful for the occasional emoji, but perhaps there's a software solution around pulling up a software emoji keyboard with the Smart Keyboard still attached. It all feels very 1.0 and experimental at this point.

Anyway, these things aside, it honestly seems downright funky to set this damned thing up for typing in a meeting, as it unfolds like a piece of origami and, you try to wrangle the right magnets to line up and snap into some sort of sensible shape.

I don't think it's better or worse than Microsoft's Surface in this, but speaking of the Surface...

Ergonomics

The iPad Pro has a whole heap of ergonomic question marks around it. While it's largely equivalent to a laptop with the Smart Keyboard is attached, it most obviously suffers from the lack of a hinge to adjust viewing angle with. In upright 'writing' position it's not too much of a concern, but since it's a tablet, it doesn't just do what a laptop does.

This is one place where Microsoft really knocked it out of the park with the Surface 3 and its kickstand. I have many issues with the Surface as a whole, and I wasn't too sure about the kickstand either when the first Surface came out, but credit where credit is due, Microsoft stuck with it and iterated to what is now a pretty enviable place.

Credit: Gizmodo

The iPad Pro essentially has three positions, requiring different paraphernalia. Flat on the table comes for free, of course. I love working like that with the pencil, it feels very natural and flexible. Tilted to a shallow angle for better typing requires the Smart Cover, while a more vertical angle requires either the Smart Cover or the Smart Keyboard.

Going back to the initial point around ergonomics, and transportation, you now have to make some decisions around what you intend to use your iPad Pro for every time you move it.

How much do you anticipate typing? Do you bring the Smart Cover or the Smart Keyboard? Neither? It depends on whether you think you'll be typing a substantial amount or not. You can bring both of course, but if you're like me, that means schlepping them in a bag on the subway, and then when you're there, do you keep them in the bag and take them out when you need them, or just go with one of them for the most part? It sounds stupid, but this becomes the decision making process every time you pick it up to move it, even when it's just from the bedroom to the living room, say.

If it did have a kickstand, there would be no choice but to bring it, and then whenever you would need it, there it is.

As it happens, I don't type a lot at meetings, and on the rare occasion that I have to, I'm okay with the software keyboard that I don't need the Smart Keyboard, or even the Smart Cover for that matter, so I tend to leave both of them somewhere else, usually at home and simply go with just the iPad Pro and with the Pencil in my pocket. This of course causes my fat fingers to grease up the screen as I'm hauling it from one floor to another, and laughter ensues as I try to polish the screen across my chest.

Nit picky enough for you yet?

Realistically, I'd be better off with the Smart Cover for the added versatility, but I also don't like how what would be referred to as the 'spine' of a book part of the cover has enough 'give' for the cover to scoot about when it's wrapped around the back of the iPad, where the magnet isn't strong enough to hold it properly in place.

Which brings us back to the enviability of the kickstand.

Preferably Apple will find a way to give us a detachable keyboard cover which will the most important bits of the flexibility of the Surface's kickstand, while relatively unobtrusive (although not as much as the Surface's kickstand is). Optimally the way I'd like to work with the iPad Pro would let me switch fluidly between full-on typing, and drawing in one move. The Surface very nearly does that, and I want it.

To swing back to the software keyboard: When it works, it's quite good, but there are some pretty significant gotcha's that often trip me up, and the biggest one is the 'trackpad' feature that lets you move the cursor by placing two fingers on the keyboard and moving them around. This feature also allows you to select a word by tapping two fingers on the keyboard, as well as selecting a sentence by tapping twice, or the paragraph by tapping thrice.

Ironically this feature was introduced in an attempt from Apple's side to up the productivity factor of the platform, but what ends up happening instead is that when I write fast, which I generally do, I delete large chunks of my text because my fingers strike close enough to each other in time and space to trigger the word or even the sentence selection, which is then replaced with the next thing I type.

This literally happens so often that it's causing me micro anxiety. Presumably 3D Touch to the rescue (although I have intermittent problems triggering that on my phone as well, so...)

The two-finger trackpad functionality is a great idea, but it in itself suffers in various ways. Sometimes when I want it to trigger, it doesn't. It won't seemingly trigger for instance if one of my two fingers is over a modifier key, something which easily happens in the heat of battle.

I also wish the number keys would be full-height, instead of the half-height that they are. I can certainly appreciate wanting to save space in the vertical, but this means that the Delete key is also half-height, which is frustrating.

Slide-Over & Split-Screen

It still lacks drag and drop between split-screen panes, but on the whole split-screen is off to a good start. The biggest problem for my money, is the pull-down app selector in the secondary pane.

It shows representations of the most recently used split-screen compatible apps, one on top another, with room enough for about three of them when using the iPad Pro in landscape mode. This works well as long as you've recently used the app you're looking for. If you haven't it's hell on Earth, as you crawl your way back through a list of apps in the order of last usage... A simple search here would do wonders and presumably incredibly easy to implement. It's not there in the iOS 9.3 beta though, so I assume it's not in the cards for the immediate future.

When in split-screen mode, it's largely impossible to easily determine which app has focus. This isn't important when you're talking about a direct-interaction model like touch, except when you suddenly bring a keyboard into the mix. Suddenly it's spot-the-caret time.

Keyboard shortcut support remains high on my wish list in general. It's confusing and frustrating that I can't switch focus between the split-screen apps with my keyboard for instance, or that iMessage and Slack support using Enter as Send, whereas Messenger does not.

Presumably Apple will do their darnedest to help developers get behind these things by giving them tools and reminders to get on it, but for now it is one of the main things that make this feel not quite ready for prime time.

Less of a concern, but it's odd that split-screen can only be initiated from the right-hand side.

Google

I use Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Gmail on my iPad Pro for work, and their apps are straight up horrendous. To begin with, none of them are optimized for the display, which means using a traditional sized iPad software keyboard stretched to comical proportions. Furthermore I'm not sure anyone at Google has ever given Spreadsheets for iOS a run for its money, because it's a mess of inscrutable interface decisions.

I have my issues with Material Design on the whole, but I understand why Google would want to carry it through to iOS, if for no other reason than trying to save some effort on cross-platform design. But it follows that it feels alien in the midst of everything else. From the outside it sometimes seems as if Google has next to no people committed to keeping up apps like Docs, Spreadsheets or Inbox; not so much an iPad Pro issue, but a general commentary on Google's lackluster commitment to iOS (the Google app and Google Maps have both been properly upgraded, I should note).

Development time is costly, but it always feels odd to see huge companies unable to maintain what from the outside seem like very successful apps.

Battery

On the rare occasion that I bottom it out and plug it in, the iPad Pro actually has problems recharging the battery as fast as it depletes. I'm currently hovering around 10%, which has caused a warning to be triggered twice in a row as it went below, then above and back below.

<pause for 30 minutes>

Even now it still hasn't risen above 12%.

Recharging this beast is an over-night ordeal, and one best not forgotten, lest you spend the next day tethered awkwardly to the nearest outlet.

When it is charged however it gives you the ten advertised hours, and quite frankly I love how consistent Apple has been with the iPad on this point. It's like Steve Jobs himself commands from beyond the grave that ten hours of battery life is the very cornerstone upon which Apple itself is built!

What Else?

It's an amazing device in many ways and I'm completely in love with the Pencil. I also find myself grabbing the iPad Pro whenever I want to read image-heavy sites or news, and often for simply writing in a more focused environment.

My mom was nice enough to gift me a long out of print artbook from the inimmitable Ron Cobb, Colorvision (1981). You'll know Cobb from films like Dark Star, Alien, Conan, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future and yes, Star Wars (which I have a particular predilection for). It contains writings from Cobb's collaborators, including a number of great little anecdotes. I highly recommend anyone with a passing interest in the films of that period to pick it up.

Cobb's art for film is heavily anchored in how things should work, be it in the carts used by Conan's nomadic barbarians or in the (unused) lifeboats in Alien. But they're not simply engineering schematics; they capture the subject in such detail that the world around it is forced into being. Cobb's art has a certain ineffable quality that seems to be largly lost in the world of conceptual art today.

Given that this book has been out of print for decades, and only available around the $100 mark, which is a bit much for most people to fork over for a book which may or may not contain anything pertinent to their interests, I figure I'd make it available as a shoddy PDF here. I say shoddy, because the book itself is too big for my scanner, and the binding rather frail, so I did what I could with my iPhone.

You'll recognize the cover, named Planet of Storms—shown above—which was made for Alien, from the landing sequence in Prometheus.

Download as PDF]]>Ronn Cobb's ColorvisionApple PencilMichael HeilemannTue, 24 Nov 2015 03:40:45 +0000http://binarybonsai.com/blog/the-apple-pencil4ea1fd23d09a45b49cc70202:55a1212ae4b0417147b65e19:56534fb0e4b0363a1d8f6e7fThe Apple Pencil's a triumph which fundamentally changes the nature of the
iPad.I've craved the iPad Pro 12.9" and Pencil since I bought the first iPad and fell head over heels in love with it. I can only imagine that it’s a matter of time before the rest of the iPad line-up is revised for the Pencil (which I think will go over quite well, as the Air is the perfect form factor for quick notes and scribbles).

Above all, now that it is here, I couldn’t be more satisfied with the result. First of all, it lovingly echoes the look and feel of the early iPods, with their shiny white and silver aesthetic, expensive, solid heft, and cut-to-the-bone simplicity. The end-cap is fiddly in a ‘just so’ manner one would expect from The House of Ive, and I can’t stop twirling it every given opportunity like I obsessively do any pencil or pen in my reach.

Everyone’s first experience is an instant success as they naturally draw across the screen and watch the Pencil leave a perfect carbon trail in its wake. Many have to be reminded to vary the pressure and angle like they would a real pencil, probably because somewhere in the back of their mind they still think of it as a stylus, or what Ive calls ‘a product that’s about technology’. This is usually followed almost immediately by disappointment as they flip it over to erase their scribbles, with no result. Looking forward to seeing that rectified in Pencil 2.

While its visceral feeling makes for a great demo, it isn’t until you get the iPad Pro and Pencil alone for a while, preferably with an app like Paper, and drift off; not to ‘try it’, simply to do. Rule of thumb: If you have to force yourself to do something, maybe it's not something you really want to do.

The Pencil is often talked about as if it was somehow only relevant to ‘creatives’, which is a strange typecasting to put on it right out of the gate. More importantly, it’s a damn pencil. It's relevant to anyone who likes the flexibility of, oh, you know, a pencil.

Or as Jony Ive so eloquently put it, it's for ‘making marks’, be they writing or drawing, or best of all, both of them together.

That's a lot of praise, and there's more where it came from. It's expensive at $100. I would pay twice that.

Remarkably without the Pencil, the iPad Pro is simply a very large iPad. With it, it is something new altogether; transformed from an oversized, unwieldy screen, into a playful canvas of limitless possibilities. Despite whatever concerns that exist around super sizing iOS from its origins as a phone OS into a modern multi-tasking productivity platform, when you're lurched over the screen it feels entirely natural. In fact, the iPad Pro's unwieldy nature dissipates when it's flat on a table, allowing for easy rotation in-place to accommodate new views, odd angled pen strokes and stints of typing.

I can't speak to how well Microsoft's Surface performs this function, but despite some great progress on the hardware side of things, my thoughts about Windows as a touch-ready operating system, and as a consequence everything on Windows, says it won't equal the focus and simplicity of the iPad.

—

The various ink engines used by pen-friendly apps soon start to show some of their quirks. My personal favorite by far is Paper, despite the fact that it is rather laggy compared to the gold standard of Apple's own Notes. Enough to notice in comparison, but not enough to get in my way. Paper allows me to work in a fashion that reminds me of the never-to-be Microsoft Courier tablet (and for good reason; the founders worked on that concept), and affords a kind of creative thinking that intermingles typing, freehand writing, drawing and images with age-old software tricks like copy, cut and paste.

On the surface of it, it seems almost silly to surmount the steep technical challenge of emulating paper digitally. Until it's there, and you realize just how freeing it makes you; how pliable it is compared to its real-world counterpart, and how powerful. How being able to move and duplicate your marks changes the very nature of them.

There are of course a few wrinkles, if ever so minor.

One of the impressive things about the Pencil is how you can tilt it and have the pencil turn from line to shading, as demonstrated on Apple's Pencil page.

Meanwhile in the real world simply tilting a pencil like that does not in fact result in shading. Real-world shading happens in the intersection of a complicated mix between the pencil's angle, applied pressure, softness of the lead and the give and material of the underlying surface. Tilting a real pencil like in the image above will most likely give you a line, even if the pencil tip is as blunt as the Apple Pencil's, but every single ink engine gets the pressure part of the equation wrong, using it only to change the opacity of the shading, so to speak.

This might seem slightly pedantic, but the implications for the user is quite dramatic when in the midst of flow as you absentmindedly try to make a line with the pencil at an angle, as you would with a real pencil, only to have it come out, unexpectedly, as shading. Undo to the rescue, but nevertheless the user's flow suffers.

This is a problem for the developers of the individual ink engines to solve, and perhaps for Apple to help along as this evolves from a 1.0 to an integral part of our day-to-day. And there are other similar issues, like how most erasers are too perfect, of all things, ignoring the rules of traditional pencil erasers.

It falls, I think, to Apple to lift up their developers by providing better starting points. Some of this they already do through new APIs in iOS 9.1 (coalesced and predictive touch), but it needs to be trivial for developers to include top-of-the-line marking functionality in their apps.

—

The iPad Pro has a long way to go, yet in a year packed to the brim with grand new Apple initiatives, I have a feeling that I will be giving up the Pencil last.

I'm confident that the hard-working people at Apple are already well aware of the current short-comings of the iPad Pro, more so than most of us I hope, and working diligently towards solving them in unexpected and delightful ways. Nevertheless, when something like the iPad Pro comes around, which is not often, there is an opportunity for those of us obsessed with personal computing and interface design in particular to look at some of the things we live with day in and day out with a fresh pair of eyes.

In the case of the iPad Pro, for it to become a viable day-to-day productivity device, one of the tasks it has to carry with particular elegance, is application switching.

Moving from application to application is inherent to how we interact with our computers. Most people who have used OS X for any length of time will eventually pick up on the use of Command-Tab, which soon becomes second nature, to the point where it is all but imperceptible to the user when they move from one application to another.

Some might also pick up on the use of OS X's search interface, Spotlight (Command-Space) and use that to switch from one application to another. On OS X is very fast and dependable. On iOS it is quite the opposite (transition speed is terrible, and search results offer no keyboard support), but never mind that for now.

Once the user has spent a couple of days with Command-Tab, the notion of "email" or "Twitter" enters their mind, and the application appears before them, muscle memory having taken care of the mechanical operation of switching from the current task to the new one without much, if any mental overhead.

A lot of different things have to come together to lay the ground work for application switching to be imperceptible in the user's mind:

The UI has to appear instantly

As always, user input should never fail to produce the desired result

The applications must be easily identifiable

Applications should appear in order of most recently used, so as to minimize travel time

While the application switching UI is open, cancelling should be easy (e.g. pressing Escape)

Beyond these basic things, the task switching interface in OS X is actually deceptively sophisticated, but more on that in a minute. For now, it's worth pointing out how in Apple's suggested iPad Pro setup—being the iPad Pro with a Smart Keyboard—despite the app switcher looking identical to OS X, you cannot in fact use your lifetime muscle memory to cancelout (unless you've inexplicably trained yourself to use Command-Shift-Tab + release to do so).

This is because once you hold down Command and press Tab on the Smart Keyboard, the app switching UI will appear (the animation is too slow, as is ever the case on iOS) and the previously used app (the second from the left) will be focused. Normally if you wanted to cancel out, while still holding down Command, you would hit Escape. But the Smart Keyboard has no Escape key, so... what are your options? While still holding Command, can hit Shift-Tab or use the left arrow key (on OS X Command-` will do the same for you, but strangely not on iOS), which will move the focus back to the currently active app; after which you'll release Command, leaving you where you started.

That's a pretty bad experience for a number of reasons. Not only is the basic operation of app switching hindered by the lack of an easy way to cancel, but the muscle memory potentially brought over from the previous system is actually broken. If you decide to cancel out of app switching when you've already moved the focus well into the ten available apps in the app switcher, you have quite a lot of keystrokes to perform to return to your previous state. Furthermore, the Command-Shift-Tab shortcut is not particularly easy to hit with a single hand (and remember, Command-` doesn't do what you might expect it to do, which is a shame, since on the Smart Keyboard, the muscle memory attempt to hit Escape hits ` instead).

Looking at the OS X application switcher again, it's worth going over some of its other functionality, such as how you can use your mouse to select an application in the UI (on iOS tapping anywhere on the screen while in app switching mode, against all expectation, does absolutely nothing), files can be dropped on application icons (which is of course not really applicable on iOS, but worth mentioning), and using the H and Q keys applications can easily be hid or quit altogether (nevermind quitting apps on iOS, but hiding would quite useful on an application currently open in a split view on iOS, so as to go fullscreen; alas that also doesn't work as might be expected).

All of these things wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that Apple went out of its way to design an app switcher which looks on the surface exactly like the one in OS X, despite the fact that iOS already has an app switching interface of its own!

One which has undergone several iterations and improvements throughout its life and is at the heart of efficient iOS operation already! More than that, it was designed for use with touch from the beginning, so you can interact with it like you would expect, and at least in my personal estimation it would actually do well with keyboard support (alas, it currently doesn't respond to keyboard input at all).

Again, I'm sure the smart people at Apple are all over this. But nevertheless, I think it speaks to the maturity of iOS in relation to OS X as a platform, especially in the light of Apple's push to make the iPad Pro a replacement for laptops. They too of course suffer from having only spent a limited amount of time with this new paradigm, but unless the Command-Tab switcher was thrown in at the last minute to appease switchers, or somehow overlooked — which I find hard to believe, unless the Pro's objective wasn't clear from the beginning, which I also find hard to believe — someone, somewhere neglected to think through a proper design spec for this feature.

Nevertheless, as it stands it is regrettably rather unrefined, and not mindful of what has come before in either world.

Update: John Gruber rightly pointed out on his podcast recently that another paradoxical thing about the two different app switchers in iOS, is that they go in opposite directions. The keyboard-triggered on has the current app on the left-hand side of the screen, with the previously used apps resceding to the right, whereas the touch-based switcher is opposite of that. Given the introduction of the status bar back arrow and the four-finger swipe for moving between applications, this actually makes sense, just not sitting next to the keyboard switcher.

Also, as a long-time OS X user, my habits keep triggering my desire to hit Command-Q on apps like Settings whenever I see them in the keyboard switcher, which is actually quite distracting.

Update: With iOS 10 the App Switcher's right-most icon is now always the springboard, making it easier to return home using the keyboard. Unfortunately it still isn't tappable.

Update, October 2017: With iOS 11, the app switching experience has been almost completely overhauled. I guess I should update this piece.

Update, November 2017: The iPhone X and its new gesture language once again upends this topic. I really should update this piece...